Archive

Speed Up Your WordPress Website with these Tips in 2017

WordPress is perhaps the most popular and common platform used by businesses to establish an online presence and engage their customers with information and news about their list of products and services. It is the world’s most used content management system or CMS.

As a business owner, it is important that you ensure high web loading and navigation speed for your visitors. The average visitor is said to have an attention span of 7 seconds and should your website not load quickly enough, you can easily lose potential customers and cause them to switch to a competitor. In this post, we will look at some of the methods and tips you can use for optimizing your WordPress website page speed.

Use A Quality Managed WordPress Hosting Service

The basic and most fundamental item responsible for your WP website’s speed is the hosting service you choose. Although web page speed is determined by the amount of images, plugins and videos you have, it is also determined by the quality of your web hosting service. Businesses often opt for non-WordPress specialized web hosting plans, such as shared hosting packages, which offer web hosting at an very low rates but with a tremendous loss in performance. Non-specialized generic shared hosting may cost less, but it is not so good in terms of web page speed since the hosting service, resources and bandwidth are shared by multiple users. As a result, frequent website downtime and slow loading speed are very common leaving visitors frustrated.

If you intend on using rich media such as images and video, it is a good idea to opt for a WordPress hosting plan that provides greater bandwidth, disk space, and technical support for downtime sort of like what we offer at XonHost.

Use a lightweight WordPress theme

WordPress has an array of themes that you can choose from to create a personalized look to your website and build a distinct online brand personality. However, be mindful of whether the theme will drag your website page speed down.

Themes that utilize heavy images and animations will use up more bandwidth and processing speed, take longer to load, and ruin a visitor’s web viewing experience. Instead, choose lightweight WordPress themes to increase website speed such as Thesis Theme Framework, which offers plenty of customization tools and good for providing good web page speed.

Compress Web Page Images

Image files are crucial for creating appealing web pages and engaging visitors, but are also the largest in terms of size that can slow down web loading and processing speed. A good way of getting round this problem is to use compressed images. This can prevent your website speed from slowing down and also add a distinct flavor to your online image. Tools, such as WP Smush.it and Tiny PNG, for instance, are particularly useful in this regard and can go a long way in grabbing customer attention without the drawback of slow web loading speed.

Optimize Web Pages

Your web pages should also be optimized for greater website speed and loading. Very often, owners make the mistake of putting out too much information, images, and videos that not only make your website look crammed, but also negatively affect SEO rankings on search engines. Keep your text and number of widgets minimal and get rid of inactive plugins. Here are some design tips we talked in our previous post.

Which WordPress Business Directory Plugins Should be at the Top of Your List?

Creating a business directory may be your goal, but you’re not sure how to go about it with WordPress. Since WordPress is one of the most powerful CMS choices on the planet, finding the right plugin will take care of what you need with a business directory.

There are several paid and free options you can use to create the right directory for your needs. Here’s a look at a few of the top choices to consider when you want to create a business directory in WordPress.

Business Directory Plugin (https://wordpress.org/plugins/business-directory-plugin/)

This free plugin provides plenty of power to help you get the most out of your business directory. If you are going to choose a free plugin, this is a great choice.

The Business Directory Plugin has plenty of features in the free version and even more if you purchase add ons. It’s used by thousands of WordPress websites and provides a comprehensive list of features for a web directory. You can offer paid listings, along with free and you can even customize the entry forms.

The front-end of the plugin is very easy to use and allows for searching and sorting. Users can easily find the right listing and the plugin is completely mobile-friendly.

GeoDirectory – WordPress Directory Plugin (https://wordpress.org/plugins/geodirectory/)

When you choose the GeoDirectory plugin for WordPress, you can easily create a location based directory. Your directory will be similar to many of the larger review sites, such as TripAdvisor and Yelp. The plugin is free, but will give you some paid extensions with even more features.

You can easily create a location based directory and the easy front-end interface makes it easy for users to submit entries. When you add paid extensions, you will be able to monetize your directory by selling listings. You can also use a paid feature to create a multi-location directory and even more.

Connections Business Directory (https://wordpress.org/plugins/connections/)

The Connections Business Directory plugin provides a basic plugin you can use free of charge. It comes with a number of paid extensions you can add for advanced features, as well.

You can easily create a business directory with this user-friendly plugin. Display your directory and allow users to experience the easy front-end operations. You will use a simple shortcode to add the directory to any page on your site. You can also customize the appearance and choose a custom template, if necessary.

Simple Directory (https://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-directory/)

Another free choice for your WordPress business directory, the Simple Directory plugin makes it easy to create a basic directory. You can choose from two templates and even create an archive listing page. This is an easy directory to customize.

You will need to add the Piklist plugin (https://wordpress.org/plugins/piklist/) and you may want to use the Category Images plugin (https://wordpress.org/plugins/categories-images/) if you want to get the most out of this plugin. You can even upgrade to the premium version for additional features.

Gravity Forms Directory (https://wordpress.org/plugins/gravity-forms-addons/)

As one of the best plugins for beginners, Gravity Forms is a full service forms plugin. You can create quizzes, surveys, contact pages and even a directory with this plugin.

The directory is an add-on you can use free of charge if you have Gravity Forms. This will give you an easy to create and use directory for your website. With the power of Gravity Forms, you can do more than with most other plugins.

If you want to create a business directory for your WordPress website, one of the plugins above will help you out. There are plenty of other choices, but these are the top choices for your new business directory.

How to Setup Google AMP On Your WordPress Site

AMP is an open-source, Google-backed service that makes your website pages load faster and easily improve speed on mobile devices without sacrificing any ad revenue that you may rely on. Google officially integrated AMP into its Google search results on Feb. 24, 2016. AMP offers better user experience and can also send more traffic to your site. In this article, I will show you how to set up Google AMP in your WordPress.

How Does AMP Work?

Google AMP consists of three parts:

  • AMP HTML — AMP HTML is basically HTML extended with custom AMP properties. This markup language has custom tags and properties and some restrictions.
  • AMP JS — The AMP JS library implements all of AMP’s best performance practices, manages resource loading and gives you custom tags, all to ensure a fast rendering of your page.
  • Google AMP Cache — The Google AMP Cache is a proxy-based content delivery network for delivering all valid AMP documents. It fetches AMP HTML pages, caches them, and improves page performance automatically.

How to Setup Google AMP on Your WordPress Site

To start using Google AMP for your WordPress site, you’ll need to download plugin from WordPress repository. Once you’ve installed and activated it, go to your Dashboard > Appearance > AMP

From here you can view a live preview of your mobile site while you configure the design for mobile view.

You can change the header text color, header background and link color and the color scheme. You can also add your site’s logo or icon if your theme supports it.  Once you are done customizing click on the “Save” button. Now you can go to any blog post and add “/amp” to the end of the URL to view the AMP version.

Installing Plugins to Extend AMP Functionality

You can install other plugins to extend the functionality and compatibility with AMP. One of the best plugins for this is AMP for WP Accelerated Mobile Pages.

You can upload your logo for the AMP version on the general section. If you have a Google Analytics account you can enter your ID.  You can also select which one of your pages to be the front page for your website’s AMP version.

Adding Advertisements

You can add advertisements to your AMP pages with the AMP WP plugin. Locate the “Advertisement” tab on the plugin.

Switch the button to “ON” whenever you wish to add another advertisement on your pages. Once you’ve switched it to “ON” you can select the ad sizes to display.

Single Post Settings

Go to the Single Post settings to configure settings. You can choose the featured image width and height and from which category to show the related posts from. Don’t forget to click on the save changes button when done changing the settings.

Our XonHost servers are WordPress friendly, Our managed WordPress provide optimized solution. Our packages are innovative, cost-effective focused on speed, security, and reliability. We offer solutions for WordPress designers and developers of all skill levels. Read more about our WordPress Hosting.

7 Free Admin Themes and Plugins for your WordPress

An admin theme in WordPress is quite different compared to an admin color scheme. However, both are very popular with WordPress users because they allow for greater customization.

When you choose a WordPress admin theme plugin, you get to customize the dashboard for your site or a client’s site. Not only will this help with branding, but it can also help you organize the site properly. You may be able to change the margins, borders, width, padding and other style and appearance settings within the admin area. Here’s a look at some of the top plugins for customizing your WordPress admin area.

Slate Admin Theme (https://wordpress.org/plugins/slate-admin-theme/)

The Slate Admin Theme plugin for WordPress allows you to add a brown admin bar and blue colors for menus, inks and buttons. This plugin will help to improve the writing experience for bloggers, along with giving you a better look for your WordPress admin area.

Blue Admin (https://wordpress.org/plugins/blue-admin/)

As one of the top WordPress Admin Theme plugins, Blue Admin allows you to make your dashboard very minimalistic. It uses blue as the primary color for the admin bar and white as the background. If you want a very clean looking dashboard, this is the right plugin for your needs.

Fancy Admin UI (https://wordpress.org/plugins/fancy-admin-ui/)

The Fancy Admin UI plugin allows you to do more with your dashboard. You can change the top admin bar to blue and use any of the primary or secondary colors you want when you access settings and go to the general menu. The default will give you a soft gray menu bar and a very clean look.

White Label CMS (https://wordpress.org/plugins/white-label-cms/)

White Label CMS isn’t an admin theme, but a way to rebrand and customize the WordPress admin area. You can take out WordPress logos, change the size of the admin area and make it fully customized to your specific needs. This is a great plugin for those working on sites for clients.

Tamed Admin Theme (https://wordpress.org/plugins/tamed-admin-theme/)

If you want to make the admin area easier to use, the Tamed Admin Theme is the right plugin for you. It will give you a calmer approach with soothing colors. The clean and simple look can make it easier to work on your site from the user interface.

Admin Color Schemer (https://wordpress.org/plugins/admin-color-schemer/)

Not exactly an admin theme for WordPress, the Admin Color Schemer plugin allows you to change the colors to anything you want. You can change the base, icon, highlight and notification colors, along with some advanced options. The combinations you can come up with are endless.

Reimagined Admin Theme (https://wordpress.org/plugins/reimagined-admin/)

Those looking for a bold look for their admin area will love the Reimagined Admin plugin. This plugin makes it possible to create a darker look with a fun appearance. It’s refreshing for some users.

Why Change the Admin Area?

Changing the WordPress admin area isn’t requires for great SEO or for anything that will help drive traffic to your WordPress site. However, by changing the colors, size, menu bars and other features, you can customize the admin area to fit your needs and what you like. For some, rebranding will help when working on multiple clients sites, while for others it may just be nice to change the look of the admin area.

If you want to customize the WordPress dashboard, using one of the admin theme plugins above will help you get just what you want. These plugins allow you to change the color scheme and provide you with a better look and function for the WordPress dashboard. They are all a bit different, but one of the plugins above will fit perfectly with your needs.

Adding Amazing Email Templates to WordPress

Your WordPress website sends out emails for many different reasons. From sending you emails with alerts to sending users emails with new blog posts, there are several emails sent out every day.

All the emails sent by WordPress will have a plain text template, by default. However, you can change this and replace the basic template with an amazing email template for WordPress. Here’s how you can add a new template for emails in WordPress.

Should You Use Email Templates in WordPress?

Those running a single-author WordPress blog without many other users or subscribers may be able to get away with just using the plain text email template in WordPress. However, if you run a multi-author site, eCommerce store, membership site or any other type of site with many users, you need a better email template for your site.

With the right HTML template, you can easily customize your emails to include your logo, colors and branding. This makes it much easier to communicate better with your users and build your brand awareness.

How to Add Email Templates in WordPress

The easiest way to add a new email template in WordPress is with the Email Templates plugin. This plugin will allow you to use amazing email templates in WordPress without the hard work of actually coding them.

After the plugin has been installed and activated, you can access it from the Appearance>>Templates section of your WordPress dashboard. This section will give you everything you need to create and modify your new email templates.

 

This plugin will utilize the WordPress customizer and will provide everything you need to create amazing templates with a live preview. You can use different sections within the customizer to make changes to your email templates. Start by clicking on the settings tab and enter the site name and email address you would like to show up.

 

If you don’t make any changes, your default email address from your WordPress settings will be used.

 

 

 

Now, you can go back to the template sections and click on the template tab. This will allow you to adjust the colors, use full width and more.

 

 

After you make your adjustments in this tab, you can move onto the header tab, which will allow you to make changes to the header of your site.

 

 

 

 

Header

 

 

 

This section will allow you to add your logo, change the alignment, change the background color and so much more. Now, you will be able to move onto the Email Body tab, which will allow you to change the actual body of the email.

 

 

You can change the background color within this section, but you will probably want to leave this as white or very light. However, within this section, you can change the text size and color, as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The final section you can change is the footer section.

This is the section to add your copyright, change the alignment and even change the color of the background. You can also change the text size and color.

After you have made all the changes to the template, you can send a test email to view it. This will allow you to see just what your new template looks like live before it ever goes out to any of your site users.

Changing the email template for your WordPress website will help you better spread brand awareness, along with so much more. You will stand out from the other emails your users receive and you will be able to better communicate your message to authors, users and subscribers.

How to Add Contact Forms To Your WordPress Site

WordPress is considered one of the most convenient and easy to use content management systems for website owners. Despite this, many website owners and those who are new to using the website, wonder how they can add a contact form to their website to build a large customer base and influence high sales turnover. In this post, we look at why contact forms are important and how you can add one on your website.

Benefits of Using Contact Forms

A contact form is simply a set of questions that have to be filled out by visitors to obtain detail about their name, email address, and other questions that are specific to the website. Many owners use contact forms since they offer a number of advantages. These are a few.

Helps generate awareness and interest

Contact forms are important for building awareness and interest of a brand. This is particularly important if you have recently created your website or brand and are in need of recognition from followers. By taking customer details such as name, email address, and other useful information, you can send information about products and services, as well as price quotes.

Helps obtain useful feedback

Contact forms can also be used to get a good insight into what customers or visitors feel about your products and services or your website. Obtaining sufficient feedback is important for ensuring your products and service meet customer expectations to grow your online business.

Builds customer base for marketing purposes

You can also use contact forms to formulate your online marketing strategy. Customer details, such as name, gender, and email address can be used either for email marketing, weekly newsletter, content marketing, and lead generation tactics.

How to Add a Contact Form?

You should use the following steps to add a contact form to your website.

  • Log into your WordPress account
  • Under the dashboard, go to plugins and then click on Add New
  • Next you have can either go on the Search Plugins box to look for a plugin of your choice or click on the Upload Plugin option at the top to install another contact form party plugin.
  • After you have selected the Contact Form 7 plug, click on the Install Now
  • Once WordPress is done installing your plugin, click on the Activate Plugin box to complete the process.

Customizing Your Contact Form

Each contact form plugin you install on your website will offer you plenty of customization features that you should use to gain information specific to your target market of niche customers. For this, you will need to add multiple fields for questions, but also be careful not to ask too many questions as visitors will not be willing enough to give their details. Keep it concise and relevant.

Another thing you should note is not to get intimidated by too many tags when customizing your contact form. You don’t need to have a computer degree to be able to customize plugins to suit your business goals. Check out our other blog post on how to make your WordPress websites speed optimal here.

WordPress vs. Drupal vs. Joomla – Which is the Right Choice?

When you sign up for a new hosting account, you will quickly notice that you have access to WordPress, Drupal and Joomla. All three of these are open source content management systems. They all provide something worth talking about, even though WordPress powers 23% of the total websites found on the internet today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All three CMS choices have quite a bit in common and have their own pros and cons. Here’s a comparison of the three to help you make the right decision.

The Things WordPress, Drupal and Joomla have in Common

 

These three CMS choices have plenty in common when it comes to the community, technology and philosophy. Some of the things they have in common include:

  • All three are primarily written in PHP
  • WordPress, Drupal and Joomla are all free and open source programs with software licensed under GPL
  • All three support MySQL and use it as their database management system. WordPress only uses MySQL, while both Drupal and Joomla support other database management choices.
  • WordPress, Drupal and Joomla are all community-driven projects with multiple developers.
  • All three use themes or templates, along with plugins, extensions or modules for adding customization and extended functionality.

Even though WordPress, Drupal and Joomla have so much in common, they are quite different. Each system has a different set of core policies, different ways of handling templates, different ways of dealing with security and more. Here’s how they compare on a few specific levels.

User-Friendliness for the Beginner

If you’re not a beginner, it might not matter how user-friendly a system is because you may want to get right into the code, anyway. However, for a beginner, the user-friendliness may be the most important part.

WordPress is the most user-friendly of the three CMS choices. You can have it installed and ready to go within just a few minutes of purchasing WordPress hosting. Once installed, it’s easy to work within the admin area, add a theme and add all the plugins you need.

Installing Drupal is also quite easy. All you have to do is download and upload the package. They also give you distributions, which are pre-packages bundles of modules for different types of website. However, once you get it installed, the experience for the beginner becomes complicated. It’s not easy to figure out how to change things or how to add content to your new website with Drupal.

The Joomla installation isn’t as fast as WordPress, but it’s still very easy. After you install Joomla, this is when it gets difficult. The control panel isn’t as easy to work within as the WordPress admin area. There are way too many menus and it can be very scary for the beginner.

Themes, Plugins, Extensions and Other Add-ons

WordPress, Drupal and Joomla all provide different themes and plugins/modules you can use to customize your website and add more features. However, they are certainly not equal in this category.

WordPress provides far more plugins and themes than Joomla and Drupal. Not only does WordPress have a directory for both, but they also have third-party creators adding plenty of premium plugins and themes to the mix. There are more than 38,000 plugins available for WordPress within the official WordPress directory. This doesn’t include the many premium choices you can pay for, as well.

Drupal and Joomla both offer extensions and templates you can use to customize your website. However, they don’t have the quantity WordPress has or even come close. WordPress also makes it much easier to find your themes and plugins with easy ways to search the directory.

Support

All three of these CMS options are community-driven, which means they have an active community ready to provide support. The major different is the size of the communities. Since WordPress has a much larger community, it’s much easier to find answers to your questions. There are plenty of WordPress tutorials available from several sources online. You can even get professional support on elance or other freelance websites.

Joomla and Drupal both provide large and helpful communities. They both have plenty of resources available in forums and through blogs and other websites. However, neither have support options comparable to what WordPress provides.

Overall, it’s easy to see why most website owners choose WordPress. With such as user-friendly system and so many options for customization, WordPress is the right choice for most beginners and many advanced users.

Which WordPress Themes are Good for SEO?

No matter what type of WordPress website you’re creating, it’s important to think about SEO from the get-go. First order of business: choose the right theme. 

Just a decade ago, most website owners wouldn’t ever have tried to do SEO on their own. It was just all so new, so risky, and so complicated. Plus, webmasters back then didn’t have access to all the great tools that you have today.

Luckily for you those days are over, and you have a world of resources at your fingertips: beginning with your choice of WordPress theme. There are dozens of small choices you can make to improve the odds you’ll eventually get traffic for your new website (or increase traffic for an existing one), so don’t fall for the common misconception that all you have to do in the way of SEO is post tons of content. If that’s all you plan on doing, you will most likely never see any meaningful increase in traffic whatsoever.

These days, the way to do SEO right is to make use of all the SEO resources available to you, starting with the right WordPress theme. There’s an amazing plethora of SEO-optimized WordPress themes out there, for the taking, and all you have to do is figure out how to identify which ones they are.

With that in mind, here’s how to tell which WordPress themes are good for SEO.

What Makes a Good WordPress Theme for SEO?

First things first: any theme designer can claim that his theme is “SEO-friendly” but there’s no governing body of regulators out there policing their claims or setting standards or anything like that. Nope, it’s up to you to know whether a theme is truly SEO-friendly.

To help you with that, here’s a short list of criteria that any good WP theme should have in order to help your website first appear, then rank in the search engines.

1. Content SEO

A good theme will offer on-page SEO capabilities that help the search engines find and learn about your website through the text that you enter. This text includes not only what you write on your pages, but also the text that appears in the following places on your website:

  • Meta Information
  • Page Text that’s not Content
  • Navigation

Any WordPress theme that allows you easy control of all these elements is good for SEO.

Meta information is snippets of identifying text that describes each individual page on your website, as well as your website in general. Think of your meta information as road signs for search engines. Things like title tags, meta descriptions, meta keywords, meta tags etc. count heavily in whether or not search engines find and favor your site.

Page text that’s not content: your sitemap is important,  and a sitemap shows all your important pages and website sections. It’s also a good idea top to put Image ALT tags on all your images, and to include link title tags as well. Basically, the more “labels” on all your website elements, the better.

Navigation elements: having “breadcrumbs” on your site is also considered to be SEO-friendly because they help users understand the layout of your site. Your menus are also important: they should work fast, they should be easy to understand, and you should have full control over them, including colors and visual effects.

2. Technical SEO & User Experience

Besides the text-based SEO indicators on your website, there are also other characteristics that make it liked or disliked by the search engines. These traits have more to do with how your website behaves.

You see, search engines increasingly favor websites that give users a good experience – and that’s not limited to whether they find good content that’s relevant to their searches. It also has to do with how long they have to wait before a page loads, for example. Or whether they can view your website on all their devices (“responsive”), including phones (“mobile-friendly”).

  1. Fast-loading
  2. Responsive
  3. Mobile-Friendly
  4. Clean code
  5. Advanced formatting options
  6. AdSense integration
  7. Natively optimized for the search engines

  8. Now for a Few Good Examples…

    Check these out, since they meet a majority of the criteria for an SEO-friendly theme (plus they’re absolutely gorgeous).

    1. Divi Theme. https://www.elegantthemes.com/gallery/divi/
    2. Schema Theme. https://mythemeshop.com/themes/schema/
    3. SociallyViral Theme: https://mythemeshop.com/themes/sociallyviral/
    4. Coni-pro Theme: https://www.quemalabs.com/theme/coni-pro/
    5. SEO WP Theme: https://themeforest.net/item/seo-wp-online-marketing-seo-social-media-agency/8012838?s_rank=1

    Finally, Don’t Forget About SEO Plugins

    WordPress plugins are a huge part of what makes WordPress the best SEO-friendly CMS platform in the world. There are hundreds, and many of them are designed to help WP users with the SEO on their sites.

    Without a doubt, the top SEO plugin is Yoast. Yoast efficiently handles many of the criteria on the lists you’ve just read, including such features as helping you manage meta descriptions and post titles.

  9. As for content, Yoast also provides a content analysis tool which lets you gauge the readability of your writing (short sentences rate high, as do sentences with “connecting words” like therefore).

    There’s much, much more that Yoast does, but we’ll leave it at that since I know you don’t have all day and I wanted to get in one more great SEO plugin before we clock out: WP Super Cache. This helps your site load faster. This, combined with a fast-loading WordPress theme, should get you all set up with a lightening-fast website that loads in a flash.

    This brings us to one last criteria: the theme you choose should be updated and compatible with the plugins you need for good SEO.

    Conclusion

    There are so many WordPress themes in the world- handing you an “exhaustive” list is nearly impossible, especially since there are new themes every day (and old ones stop getting supported). The best thing you can do for yourself is to arm yourself with knowledge of what makes an SEO-friendly WordPress theme, then go out into the world and find one that suits you and which also meets all the criteria I’ve set out for you in this article. With that, I send you forth into the wild (I think you’re ready!)… good luck with your website!

How can you Quickly Lower your WordPress Website Bounce Rate?

It’s very easy to see your bounce rate skyrocket with a blog. Maybe you haven’t published anything in quite some time or you just don’t have the right design. There are many reasons why your bounce rate may be too high.

If your visitors are only averaging a little over one page view per session and the bounce rate is very high, you may need to do a few things to fix this. Even if you’re attracting thousands of visitors, a high bounce rate basically means your visitors don’t care about your blog. Here are a few ways you can lower your WordPress website bounce rate quickly and easily.

Use a Responsive Design

 

Within WordPress, you have a few options for providing a better mobile experience for users. You can use a theme with a responsive design or you can install a plugin to give you a mobile version of your website. Regardless of how you go about it, you need a mobile-friendly website.

With over half of the searchers on Google using their mobile device to access your website, this could be the reason for your high bounce rate. If they cannot properly view your website on their device, they will move on.

If you use the Google Webmaster Tools, you can easily find out where people are viewing your site. You can use these tools to see whether they are using mobile devices or personal computers, along with far more. This makes it easy to see whether or not a mobile-friendly website would benefit you, which for most, it will in more ways than just one.

Add Fixed Navigation

With fixed navigation, you get a feature that keeps your top navigation bar fixed when the user scrolls. This means, it won’t disappear as they scroll to read more content on your website. It may seem like a small change, and it is, but fixed navigation can really help with mobile users and non-mobile users.

Since it keeps the scroll bar fixed, it’s easier for users to navigate to the next thing when they are done reading. It can be implemented easily with the right WordPress theme or plugin. The easiest way is with one of the many free plugins including Sticky Header from Themato Soup (https://wordpress.org/plugins/sticky-header/).

Add Floating Social Buttons

 

Sometimes, the social buttons disappear as somebody scrolls through your content. Just like the fixed navigation floating social buttons allow your social share buttons to remain seen no matter where the user goes. This can help draw more visitors to your site and keep your bounce rate lower as the user doesn’t have to leave your site to share the content.

Write Better Content

 

One of the major reasons visitors leave a website is due to poor quality content. This is a huge issue and may be the reason for your high bounce rate.

In order to fix this issue, you need to provide high quality, usable content your audience will want to devour, share and come back for more. The content should leave them searching your site for more good information, which will help reduce your bounce rate.

Your bounce rate is very important to both SEO and your conversions. Make sure you implement these tips and other strategies to keep your bounce rate to a minimum. There are so many other things you can do to ensure it remains lower, such as looking at your load times, switching to a better hosting company or changing your overall design. Look into all the possibilities and work hard to reduce your bounce rate.

Which Social Networks are Unusual, Yet Powerful for Bloggers?

You’re probably involved in social media platforms that help build your blog like Facebook and Pinterest. Have you considered expanding to some of the unusual social media platforms as well? Some of the lesser known platforms like InfoBarrel, Scoop.It, MyBlogU, and Quibb are probably unfamiliar to you but they are actually quite powerful.

Bloggers should take the time to look into these platforms because they are not oversaturated and they offer different techniques that your typical social media platforms don’t specialize in. whether you want to network through BizSugar or allow people to vote on your content through Kingged, here is a look at some unusual social networks that are powerful tools for bloggers.

DeviantART

This social network is great for promoting your content in which you can gain “watchers” through your journal entries and polls. Promote short stories by posting excerpts and linking it back to your website for readers to find the full story. Then, watch traffic comment on your story.

Kingged

This is handy site for any blogging niche because you can promote your posts across the community. It’s a content-based network for writing and promoting your content right on the platform. Then, people can comment, discuss, and share on bloggers’ content. Plus, they can vote on content so if you have great votes, you’ll start gaining respect and authority for your blogging abilities. Be sure to lead them back to your blog for even more of your work.

GNU Social

Check out GNU Social for a Twitter-style platform. Join a community or self-host. Run an account on the federated network of choice, promote your blog posts, and you’ll be seen on the entire community over several federated networks.

Scoop.It

Check out this unique social network that specializes in being a content curation tool. It’s a great way to share your blog posts, look for places to suggest it, and network. You suggest your content and hope to be “scooped” like a Pinterest board is “pinned.”

InfoBarrel

Check out this one if you want to try to share your content and earn a passive income. It should help you boost your income because you’ll be networking and getting people to discuss your content. It’s a great way to grow your network of other blogger contacts too.

Quibb

Check out Quibb for blogs on specific niches and industries that handle problems with analytical data. Grow your blog community through this social network if you’re in the tech world because it’s a great resource with helpful people. The members-only platform requires approval of an application first.

MyBlogU

You’ll love MyBlogU’s blogger network for chatting with others, finding jobs through contacts, and participating in friendly competitions. Rather than sharing and promoting your blog, you are asking for opinions, sharing ideas, and communicating. Share your projects, brainstorming ideas, and media while you make friends and network.

BizSugar

BizSugar is a great choice for business bloggers that need to build the traffic up. You can connect and network with bloggers in the same niche or industry.

Along with these great networks, you can always use the typical Google+, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter and more to continue building your blog. Just remember that sometimes the lesser known sources can have the most impact on your success.